Jennifer Jacquet
I am an American post-doc based at the University of British Columbia, where I also completed my Ph.D.
jjacquet
Posts by this author
August 21, 2008
NewScientist's Thomas Hayden just reviewed Sizzle and liked what he saw. He recognized the film wasn't playing to the interests and expectations of the science world (Al Gore already did that) but about the importance of using humor to open hearts and minds to the topic of climate change. Read…
August 18, 2008
Overfishing, eutrophication, acidification, and climate change are leading to what Dr. Jeremy Jackson describes as the rise of slime in the oceans. For some recent evidence, check out this invasive algae in Crystal RIver or this recent story about increase in jellyfish on the Jersey shores.…
August 14, 2008
A British trawler was caught on film dumping tons of cod and other white fish overboard. This wasteful practice of discarding 'bycatch' is the result of catching fish that are too small (according to regulations) or unmarketable. The film caused quite the uproar, though it should be noted that…
August 6, 2008
Many of you will recall my passion and compassion for the illustrious sea cow (and for those of you who haven't watched it, the exploding manatee heart is a must). A few weeks ago, after I attended the International Coral Reefs Symposium I went back to my old stomping ground (water?) of Crystal…
July 24, 2008
Check out some research that was presented (that I unfortunately did not get to see) at the Society for Conservation Biology conference in Chattanooga, TN. Here is what the scientist did: he gave consumers the option of eating caviar from a "rare" species of sturgeon or a "common" species of…
July 16, 2008
As Josh just mentioned, overfishing is an underestimated problem. Furthermore, new research from UBC Fisheries Centre economist Rashid Sumaila (and one of my esteemed committee-members!) shows that rising fuel costs may not keep fishers, big or small, off the water, to the extent that governments…
July 14, 2008
Given that Randy Olson is not only a director but also the founder of the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project as well as my co-blogger, you might expect that I have favorable things to say about his latest film--and I do. It was a delight to watch Sizzle and equally delightful to be privy to…
July 13, 2008
Barack Obama attended the 11th International Symposium on Coral Reefs and here is proof: him sandwiched between two top ocean scientists and proponents of the term 'shifting baselines': Daniel Pauly and Jeremy Jackson.
Okay, okay. So he is a cardboard cutout. I purchased him back in Ohio to…
July 11, 2008
I am here in Ft. Lauderdale at the 11th International Coral Reefs Symposium, which only happens once every four years. It's a big deal and more than 3000 scientists have gathered to discuss coral reefs for the week. The news for coral reefs, as you might suspect, is grim (one scientist described…
July 10, 2008
There is a great interview with Randy Olson about his new film Sizzle published today by Erik Hoffner at Grist. Check it out here.
July 5, 2008
Check out some thoughts on overfishing and sustainable seafood (including my own) compiled by Greenpeace here.
June 30, 2008
I spoke with my sometimes co-blogger Randy Olson this morning. He's up to his neck in Sizzle hustling (though he did have time last week to host a dinner with Carl Zimmer, Chris Mooney and friends as Carl was in L.A. promoting his new book). The Sizzle folks have come up with a rather novel idea…
June 27, 2008
Believe it. Pigs and poultry gobble down 14 million tonnes of seafood (more than twice the amount the Japanese consume) every year because we feed it to them. Read my full post on the subject at The Gristmill.
June 24, 2008
Mark Powell at Blogfish points to an article in last week's Miami Herald where a reporter had to bow out of his search for sustainable seafood because it was too much work and too expensive. The messages are, indeed, too mixed and confusing (we established that after the episode last summer that…
June 23, 2008
I just finished teaching a 200-level course on Marine Science at Western Washington University and this quarter, just as last quarter, I offered the students extra credit if they wrote a letter to their representative about an ocean issue and proposed solution to the problem that they learned about…
June 18, 2008
Yesterday, Greenpeace-USA released a report criticizing supermarkets for buying unsustainable seafood. Greenpeace-Canada also released a similar report, which I spoke about this morning on CTV news. As I said in the interview, if we want sustainable seafood to become something more than just…
June 11, 2008
Since we're on the subject of eating lower on the food web, check out this wonderful, solutions-oriented article on Putting Meat Back in Its Place by Mark Bittman for The New York Times (and its imaginative artwork)...
June 10, 2008
Taras Grescoe, author of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood has a new article out in the New York Times on why we should opt for sardines over salmon. On the one hand, I disagree with Grescoe's overall premise that we can steer consumption to achieve a desirable…
June 9, 2008
It's movie time again for my sometimes co-blogger, Dr. Randy Olson, who today opens the website for his new movie, "Sizzle: A global warming comedy." Just the fact that they have been invited to the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Los Angeles for their world premiere tells you that it's…
June 6, 2008
I have also imagined that high levels of mobility exacerbate the shifting baselines syndrome since the baseline would then be spatially inconsistent. But there is hope: humans don't move too much. A new study published in Nature and written up in The New York Times tracked the movements of 100,…
June 2, 2008
A student of mine recently sent me this photo of a jellyfish strewn beach with the following text:
I took this picture when I was living in Arica, Chile four years ago. The people who lived there said that it was like this every summer, but it was getting progressively worse each year, not by much…
May 30, 2008
At the Fisheries Centre, we always talk about how an increase in fuel price will lead to less fishing (less flying, less driving, etc., too). The annual fuel subsidy to fishermen globally is $6.3 billion annually and, without it, many overfished species might experience reprieve. But today, an…
May 28, 2008
Back in 1966, after decades of whaling (including the Whaling Olympics of the 1930s), humpback numbers in the northern Pacific ocean were at most 1,400 individuals. An article in Nature this week shows that there are now 20,000 humpbacks in that region, the most recorded since 1966. This is great…
May 22, 2008
This short video from KQED discusses how and why Stanford researchers, including tuna specialist Barbara Block, are tagging ocean inhabitants.
May 21, 2008
This month, WIRED magazine offers 10 green heresies, such as the suggestion to buy conventionally grown foods over organic ones and to embrace nuclear power, to save the planet. I certainly support their efforts to bring attention to some fallacies of the green-marketing movement (the authors…
May 19, 2008
A couple weeks ago, Greenpeace invaded the Brussels Seafood Expo and hung signs calling attention to the dismal state of tuna fisheries. Just a week later, Greenpeace-USA announced its forthcoming publication that ranks U.S. supermarkets in terms of procuring sustainable seafood. This is an…
May 16, 2008
Today is Endangered Species Day, a resolution introduced by Maine Senator Susan Collins and California Senator Dianne Feinstein to help increase awareness about threats to endangered wildlife, fish and plants.
In celebration, let's look at this article in the BBC about how wildlife populations are…
May 14, 2008
Today, my review of Taras Grescoe's recently published book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood is up at The Tyee.
When Taras Grescoe declares he will try anything on his voyage around the world in search of ethical seafood, he means it. He eats poisonous pufferfish,…
May 14, 2008
Polar bears are threatened with global climate change and, in recognition of this, were just listed as 'threatened' under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Read more here.